The oversized wooden stairs at 345 Montgomery were covered in blood, cheese cubes, and a few errant grapes when I arrived at the new ICA San Francisco’s opening party. 

The building, barnacled to the side of the Bank of America (formerly, the Bank of Italy) flagship location, is mostly empty space. Copper tinted glass walls open to concrete and erected bannisters that define each floor's inner perimeter against the large, central hole that gives the building it’s nickname: “The Cube”. The art on display seeps into that emptiness. I felt like I was looking across a vast expanse of water towards distant shores. 

“What happened?” I asked the first person I saw, a guy named Matt who buys art for the city's only private social club. He tells me someone fell while balancing a plate of hor d’oeuveurs, sending him down the building's long, precarious staircase until he violently hit his head. While he’s recounting the story, I look into the cube's center at a pair of EMTs dressed for the emergency room — paper booties over their sneakers — mopping up blood and gingerly placing sodden towels in a biohazard waste bag. Later, I’ll see them in the background of numerous celebratory instagram posts.

“Vornado Realty Trust invited us to partner with them to activate The Cube,” the ICA board president announced, flinging QR codes on thick cardboard coasters into the crowd. One nipped Quintessa on the neck. More blood? 

David Ireland patching the sidewalk in front of his 500 Capp Street home (photos from an old Open Space article)

At a holiday party at the David Ireland house, I stood in an industrial and over-bright stairwell, an institutional space latched on to the artist’s home, too nervous to navigate back into the molasses walls and carefully assembled piles that characterize his former residence. It was fun. I kept catching Nico beaming at his various guests.

I got caught in conversation a few times, first held up by a boy I asked “how old are you?” every other sentence while he proposed a “fire” conceptual project where we switch lives and become responsible for each others’ worlds. Later, someone came over and announced: “Thea hates my art.” 

That surprised me. I was embarrassed, and at the same time confused, do I hate their art? 

Even though I spend a lot of time with artists, and writing about art, it’s difficult for me to explain what I do and do not like. Have you ever watched an attractive person grow ugly with the introduction of a certain unsettling quality? I find disliking to be a durational process, a slow burn towards disdain that, in a moment, can change course. I have an unstable relationship to taste, liking and disliking quite unexpectedly. 

I feel the same way about cities. I have a mutable relationship to San Francisco, a needing one. Rejection is possible. The city doesn’t love me, then it loves me back. Lately it's been obtuse, there’s a subtle force of rejection everywhere, pressing me away from the world. 

I don’t know if everyone feels this way, or if I’ve got some strange proclivity to view everything as sensitive, responding to my touch: San Francisco forever unfixed. 

Part of the intimacy comes from the fact that San Francisco is without much consecrated cultural memory. Without clear nodes, one navigates the city independently, improvising routes rather than being subtly sucked towards homophilic zones. We find out about it for ourselves.

Everyone I know who loves it here has a preciousness about it. I feel it rise to the surface of my mind with just the lightest invitation.

I got a spam email with no subject line that just said:  “we need to dialog on this please”.

It resonates. I'm beginning to consult what's thrown away more carefully than I attend to what’s meant for me. Sometimes I wonder if categorical forms of thought are overtaking the world. Good and bad. Like and dislike. My “suggested” posts. Show me good, down-vote the bad. Life’s a board of images. No, it isn’t like that. Small chances are getting through.

Roberto puts in a fake tooth to talk to my sister. 
Lotte writes there’s no feeling left in the official texts. 
Gabriel says everything is always going to keep changing. 
 

We’re in the truth channel, Aki said, almost a year ago now as we ascended the steps of Precita. I remember a muted blue skirt which, when illuminated, revealed flowers cut out in a lighter shade.

In the truth channel I said things exactly the way I wanted because there was no permanency and there were no consequences. Truth invites such instantaneity. 

Please email me back at theadora.walsh@gmail.com